the principle of subjectivity, that Plato in the first place does
not allow individuals to choose their own class; this we demand as
necessary to freedom. It is not, however, birth which marks off the
different ranks, and determines individuals for these; but everyone is
tested by the governors of the state, who are the elders of the first
class, and have the education of individuals in their hands. According
as anyone has natural ability and talents, these elders make choice
and selection, and assign each man to a definite occupation.[73] This
seems in direct contradiction to our principle, for although it is
considered right that to a certain class there should belong a special
capacity and skill, it always remains a matter of inclination which
class one is to belong to; and with this inclination, as an apparently
free choice, the class makes itself for itself. But it is not permitted
that another individual should prescribe as to this, or say, for
example: “Because you are not serviceable for anything better, you are
to be a labourer.” Everyone may make the experiment for himself; he
must be allowed to decide regarding his own affairs as subject in a
subjective manner, by his own free will, as well as in consideration of
external circumstances; and nothing must therefore be put in his way if
he says, for instance: “I should like to apply myself to study.”
β. From this determination it further follows that Plato (De Republica,
III. pp. 416, 417 Steph.; pp. 162-164 Bekk.) in like manner altogether
abolished in his state the principle of private property. For in it
individuality, the individual consciousness, becomes absolute; or the
person is looked on as implicit, destitute of all content. In law,
as such, I rank as “this” implicitly and explicitly. All rank thus,
and I rank only because all rank, or I rank only as universal; but
the content of this universality is fixed particularity. When in a
question of law we have to do with law, as such, to the judges of the
case it matters not a whit whether this or that man actually possesses
the house, and likewise the contending parties think nothing of the
possession of the thing for which they strive, but of right for right’s
sake, (as in morality duty is done for duty’s sake): thus a firm hold
is kept of the abstraction, and from the content of reality abstraction
is made. But Being to Philosophy is no abstraction, but the unity of
the universal and reality, or its content. The content has therefore
weight only in as far as it is negatively posited in the universal;
thus only as returning into it, and not absolutely. In so far as I
use things,—not in so far as I have them merely in my possession,
or as they have worth for me as existent, as definitely fixed on
me,—they stand in living relation to me. With Plato, then, those of the
other class (cf. _supra_, p. 101, note) carry on handicrafts, trade,
husbandry, and procure what will satisfy the general requirements,
without acquiring personal property by means of their work, for they
are all one family, wherein each has his appointed occupation; but the
product of the work is common, and he receives as much as he requires
both of his own and of the general product. Personal property is a
possession which belongs to me as a certain person, and in which my
person as such comes into existence, into reality; on this ground Plato
excludes it. It remains, however, unexplained how in the development of
industries, if there is no hope of acquiring private property, there
can be any incentive to activity; for on my being a person of energy
very much depends my capacity for holding property. That an end would
be put to all strifes and dissensions and hatred and avarice by the
abolition of private property, as Plato thinks, (De Republica, V. p.
464 Steph.; pp. 243, 244 Bekk.) may very well be imagined in a general
way; but that is only a subordinate result in comparison with the
higher and reasonable principle of the right of property: and liberty
has actual existence only so far as property falls to the share of the
person. In this way we see subjective freedom consciously removed by
Plato himself from his state.
γ. For the same reason Plato also abolishes marriage, because it is a
connection in which persons of opposite sex, as such, remain mutually
bound to one another, even beyond the mere natural connection. Plato
does not admit into his state family life—the particular arrangement
whereby a family forms a whole by itself,—because the family is nothing
but an extended personality, a relationship to others of an exclusive
character within natural morality,—which certainly is morality,
but morality of such a character as belongs to the individual as
particularity. According to the conception of subjective freedom,
however, the family is just as necessary, yea, sacred to the individual
as is property. Plato, on the contrary, causes children to be taken
away from their mothers immediately after birth, and has them gathered
together in a special establishment, and reared by nurses taken from
among the mothers who gave them birth; he has them brought up in
common, so that no mother can possibly recognize her child. There are
certainly to be marriage celebrations, and each man is to have his
particular wife, but in such a way that the intercourse of man and wife
does not pre-suppose a personal inclination, and that it should not be
their own pleasure which marks out individuals for one another. The
women should bear children from the twentieth to the fortieth year, the
men should have wives from the thirtieth to the fifty-fifth year. To
prevent incest, all the children born at the time of a man’s marriage
shall be known as his children.[74] The women, whose natural vocation
is family life, are by this arrangement deprived of their sphere. In
the Platonic Republic it therefore follows that as the family is broken
up, and the women no longer manage the house, they are also no longer
private persons, and adopt the manners of the man as the universal
individual in the state. And Plato accordingly allows the women to take
their part like the men in all manly labours, and even to share in
the toils of war. Thus he places them on very nearly the same footing
as the men, though all the same he has no great confidence in their
bravery, but stations them in the rear only, and not even as reserve,
but only as _arrière-garde_, in order that they may at least inspire
the foe with terror by their numbers, and, in case of necessity, hasten
to give aid.[75]
These are the main features of the Platonic Republic, which has as
its essential the suppression of the principle of individuality; and
it would appear as though the Idea demanded this, and as if this were
the very point on which Philosophy is opposed to the ordinary way
of looking at things, which gives importance to the individual, and
thus in the state, as also in actualized mind, looks on the rights of
property, and the protection of persons and their possessions, as the
basis of everything that is. Therein, however, lies the very limit
of the Platonic Idea—to emerge only as abstract idea. But, in fact,
the true Idea is nothing else than this, that every moment should
perfectly realize and embody itself, and make itself independent,
while at the same time, in its independence, it is for mind a thing
sublated. In conformity with this Idea, individuality must fully
realize itself, must have its sphere and domain in the state, and yet
be resolved in it. The element of the state is the family, that is,
the family is the natural unreasoning state; this element must, as
such, be present. Then the Idea of the state constituted by reason
has to realize all the moments of its Notion in such a way that they
become classes, and the moral substance divides itself into portions,
as the bodily substance is separated into intestines and organs, each
of which lives on in a particular way of its own, yet all of which
together form only one life. The state in general, the whole, must
finally pervade all. But in exactly the same way the formal principle
of justice, as abstract universality of personality with individual
Being as its existent content, must pervade the whole; one class,
nevertheless, specially belongs to it. There must, then, also be a
class in which property is held immediately and permanently, the
possession of the body and the possession of a piece of land alike;
and in the next place, a class where acquisition is continually going
on, and possession is not immediate, as in the other, but property is
ever fluctuating and changing. These two classes the nation gives up
as a part of itself to the principle of individuality, and allows
rights to reign here, permitting the constant, the universal, the
implicit to be sought in this principle, which really is a principle of
variability. This principle must have its full and complete reality,
it must indeed appear in the shape of property. We have here for the
first time the true, actual mind, with each moment receiving its
complete independence, and the mind itself attaining to being-another
in perfect indifference of Being. Nature cannot effect this production
of independent life in her parts, except in the great system.[76] This
is, as we shall elsewhere see, the great advance of the modern world
beyond the ancient, that in it the objective attains to greater, yea,
to absolute independence, but for the very same reason returns with all
the greater difficulty into the unity of the Idea.
The want of subjectivity is really the want of the Greek moral idea.
The principle which became prominent with Socrates had been present up
to this time only in a more subordinate capacity; now it of necessity
became an even absolute principle, a necessary moment in the Idea
itself. By the exclusion of private property and of family life, by
the suspension of freedom in the choice of the class, _i.e._ by the
exclusion of all the determinations which relate to the principle of
subjective freedom, Plato believes he has barred the doors to all the
passions; he knew very well that the ruin of Greek life proceeded
from this, that individuals, as such, began to assert their aims,
inclinations, and interests, and made them dominate over the common
mind. But since this principle is necessary through the Christian
religion—in which the soul of the individual is an absolute end, and
thus has entered into the world as necessary in the Notion of the
mind—it is seen that the Platonic state-constitution cannot fulfil
what the higher demands of a moral organism require. Plato has not
recognized the knowledge, wishes, and resolutions of the individual,
nor his self-reliance, and has not succeeded in combining them with
his Idea; but justice demands its rights for this just as much as
it requires the higher resolution of the same, and its harmony with
the universal. The opposite to Plato’s principle is the principle of
the conscious free will of individuals, which in later times was by
Rousseau more especially raised to prominence: the theory that the
arbitrary choice of the individual, the outward expression of the
individual, is necessary. In this the principle is carried to the
very opposite extreme, and has emerged in its utter one-sidedness.
In opposition to this arbitrariness and culture there must be the
implicitly and explicitly universal, that which is in thought, not as
wise governor or morality, but as law, and at the same time as my Being
and my thought, _i.e._ as subjectivity and individuality. Men must have
brought forth from themselves the rational along with their interests
and their passions, just as it must enter into reality through the
necessities, opportunities, and motives that impel them.
There is still another celebrated side of the Platonic philosophy which
may be considered, namely æsthetics, the knowledge of the beautiful. In
respect to this, Plato has in like manner seized the one true thought,
that the essence of the beautiful is intellectual, the Idea of reason.
When he speaks of a spiritual beauty, he is to be understood in the
sense that beauty, as beauty, is sensuous beauty, which is not in some
other place—no one knows where; but what is beautiful to the senses
is really the spiritual. The case is the same here as it is with his
Idea. As the essence and truth of phenomena in general is the Idea,
the truth of phenomenal beauty must also be this Idea. The relation
to the corporeal, as a relation of the desires, or of pleasure and
utility, is no relation to it as the beautiful; it is a relation to
it as the sensuous alone, or a relation of particular to particular.
But the essence of the beautiful is just the simple Idea of reason
present to the sensuous apprehension as a thing; the content of the
thing is nothing else than this.[77] The beautiful is essentially of
spiritual nature; it is thus not merely a sensuous thing, but reality
subject to the form of universality, to the truth. This universal
does not, however, retain the form of universality, but the universal
is the content whose form is the sensuous mode; and therein lies the
determination of the beautiful. In science, the universal has again the
form of the universal or of the Notion; but the beautiful appears as an
actual thing—or, when put into words, as a popular conception, in which
mode the material exists in mind. The nature, essence, and content of
the beautiful is recognized and judged by reason alone, as its content
is the same as that of Philosophy. But because reason appears in the
beautiful in material guise, the beautiful ranks below knowledge, and
Plato has for this very reason placed the true manifestation of reason
in knowledge, where it is spiritually manifested.
This may be regarded as the kernel of Plato’s philosophy. His
standpoint is: first, the contingent form of speech, in which men
of noble and unfettered nature converse without other interest than
that of the theory which is being worked out; secondly, led on by the
content, they reach the deepest Notions and the finest thoughts, like
jewels on which one stumbles, if not exactly in a sandy desert, yet at
least upon the arid path; in the third place, no systematic connection
is to be found, though one interest is the source of all; in the fourth
place, the subjectivity of the Notion is lacking throughout; but in the
fifth place, the substantial Idea forms the principle.
Plato’s philosophy had two stages through which it of necessity
developed and worked its way up to a higher principle. The universal
which is in reason had first to fall into two divisions opposed to
each other in the most direct and unmitigated contradiction, in the
independence of the personal consciousness which exists for itself:
thus in the New Academy self-consciousness goes back into itself,
and becomes a species of scepticism—the negative reason, which
turns against all that is universal, and fails to find the unity
of self-consciousness and the universal, coming accordingly to a
standstill at that point. But, in the second place, the Neo-Platonists
constitute the return, this unity of self-consciousness and the
absolute essence; to them God is directly present in reason, reasoned
knowledge itself is the Divine Spirit, and the content of this
knowledge is the Being of God. Both of these we shall consider later.
B. ARISTOTLE.
Here we leave Plato, and we do so with regret. But seeing that we
pass to his disciple, Aristotle, we fear that it behoves us to enter
even more into detail, since he was one of the richest and deepest
of all the scientific geniuses that have as yet appeared—a man whose
like no later age has ever yet produced. Because we still possess so
large a number of his works, the extent of the material at hand is
proportionately greater; unfortunately, however, I cannot give to
Aristotle the amount of attention that he deserves. For we shall have
to confine ourselves to a general view of his philosophy, and simply
remark on one particular phase of it, viz. in how far Aristotle in his
philosophy carried out what in the Platonic principle had been begun,
both in reference to the profundity of the ideas there contained, and
to their expansion; no one is more comprehensive and speculative than
he, although his methods are not systematic.
As regards the general character of Aristotle’s writings, he may be
said to have extended his attention to the whole circle of human
conceptions, to have penetrated all regions of the actual universal,
and to have brought under the subjection of the Notion both their
riches and their diversitude. For most of the philosophic sciences
have to render thanks to him both for their characterization and first
commencement. But although in this way Science throughout falls into
a succession of intellectual determinations of determinate Notions,
the Aristotelian philosophy still contains the profoundest speculative
Notions. Aristotle proceeds in reference to the whole in the same
way as in the individual case. But a general view of his philosophy
does not give us the impression of its being in construction a
self-systematized whole, of which the order and connection pertain
likewise to the Notion; for the parts are empirically selected
and placed together in such a way that each part is independently
recognized as a determinate conception, without being taken into the
connecting movement of the science. We need not try to demonstrate
necessity from the standpoint of the philosophy of that time. But
although Aristotle’s system does not appear to be developed in its
parts from the Notion, and its parts are merely ranged side by side,
they still form a totality of truly speculative philosophy.
One reason for treating of Aristotle in detail rests in the fact that
no philosopher has had so much wrong done him by the thoughtless
traditions which have been received respecting his philosophy, and
which are still the order of the day, although for centuries he was
the instructor of all philosophers. For to him views are ascribed
diametrically opposite to his philosophy. And while Plato is much read,
the treasures contained in Aristotle have for centuries, and until
quite modern times, been as good as unknown, and the falsest prejudices
reign respecting him. Almost no one knows his speculative and logical
works; in modern times more justice has been done to his writings
regarding nature, but not to his philosophic views. For instance, there
is a quite generally held opinion that the Aristotelian and Platonic
philosophies are directly opposed, the one being idealistic and the
other realistic, and that, indeed, in the most trivial sense. For Plato
is said to have made the ideal his principle, so that the inward
idea creates from itself; according to Aristotle, on the contrary,
we are told that the soul is made a _tabula rasa_, receiving all its
determinations quite passively from the outer world; and his philosophy
is thus mere empiricism—Locke’s philosophy at its worst. But we shall
see how little this really is the case. In fact Aristotle excels Plato
in speculative depth, for he was acquainted with the deepest kind of
speculation—idealism—and in this upholds the most extreme empirical
development. Quite false views respecting Aristotle even now exist in
France. An example of how tradition blindly echoes opinions respecting
him, without having observed from his works whether they are justified
or not, is the fact that in the old Æsthetics the three unities of the
drama—action, time and place—were held to be _règles d’Aristote, la
saine doctrine_. But Aristotle speaks (Poet. c. 8 et 5)[78] only of the
unity of treatment, or very occasionally of the unity of time; of the
third unity, that of place, he says nothing.
As regards Aristotle’s life, he was born at Stagira, a Thracian town
on the Strymonian Gulf, but a Greek colony. Thus, though a Thracian,
he was by birth a Greek. This Greek colony fell, however, like The
rest of the country, under the rule of Philip of Macedon. The year of
Aristotle’s birth is the first of the 99th Olympiad (384 B.C.), and
if Plato was born in the third year of the 87th Olympiad (430 B.C.),
Aristotle must have been forty-six years younger than he. His father
Nicomachus was physician to the Macedonian king, Amyntas, the father
of Philip. After the death of his parents, whom he lost early, he
was brought up by a certain Proxenus, to whom he was ever grateful;
and during all his life he held the memory of this friend in such
high esteem, that he honoured it by erecting statues to him. He also
requited Proxenus for the education given him, by later on bringing
up his son Nicanor, adopting him as his own son and making him his
heir. In the seventeenth year of his age Aristotle came to Athens,
and remained there twenty years in company with Plato.[79] He thus
had the best possible opportunity of becoming thoroughly acquainted
with Plato’s philosophy, and therefore, if we are told that he did not
understand it (Vol. I p. 167), this is shown, by the evident facts
of the case, to be an arbitrary and quite unfounded assumption. As
regards the relation of Plato to Aristotle, and particularly as regards
the fact that Plato did not select Aristotle as his successor in the
Academy, but chose Speusippus, a near relative, instead, a number of
idle and contradictory anecdotes have come to us from Diogenes (V. 2).
If the continuation of the Platonic school was designed to express
the hope that the philosophy of Plato, as comprehended by himself,
was to be there satisfactorily maintained, Plato could certainly not
designate Aristotle as his successor, and Speusippus was the right
man to be selected. However, Plato had nevertheless Aristotle as his
successor, for Aristotle understood Philosophy in Plato’s sense, though
his philosophy was deeper and more worked out, and thus he carried it
further. Displeasure at being thus passed over is said to have been the
cause of Aristotle’s leaving Athens after Plato’s death, and living
for three years with Hermias, the Tyrant of Atarneus in Mysia, who had
been a disciple of Plato along with Aristotle, and who had then struck
up a close friendship with the latter. Hermias, an independent prince,
was, together with other absolute Greek princes and some Republics,
brought under the subjection of a Persian satrap in Asia Minor. Hermias
was even sent as prisoner to Artaxerxes in Persia, and he at once
caused him to be crucified. In order to avoid a similar fate, Aristotle
fled with his wife Pythias, the daughter of Hermias, to Mitylene, and
lived there for some time. He, however, erected a statue to Hermias in
Delphi, with an inscription which has been preserved. From it we know
that it was by cunning and treachery that he came under the power of
the Persians. Aristotle also honoured his name in a beautiful hymn on
Virtue, which has likewise come down to us.[80]
From Mitylene he was (Ol. 109, 2; 343 B.C.) summoned by Philip of
Macedon to undertake the education of Alexander, who was then fifteen
years old. Philip had already invited him to do this in the well-known
letter that he addressed to him just after Alexander’s birth: “Know
that a son is born to me, but I thank the gods less that they have
given him to me, than that they have caused him to be born in your
time. For I hope that your care and your wisdom will make him worthy
of me and of his future kingdom.”[81] It certainly would appear to be
a brilliant historic destiny to be the instructor of an Alexander, and
Aristotle at this court enjoyed the favour and esteem of Philip and
of Olympias in the highest degree. What became of Aristotle’s pupil
is known to all, and the greatness of Alexander’s mind and deeds, as
also his enduring friendship, are the best witnesses of the success,
as also of the spirit of this up-bringing, if Aristotle required such
testimony. Alexander’s education utterly refuted the common talk about
the practical uselessness of speculative philosophy. Aristotle had in
Alexander another and worthier pupil than Plato found in Dionysius.
Plato’s great interest was his Republic, the ideal of a state; he
enters into relation with a person through whom it might be carried
out; the individual was thus to him a medium only, and in so far
indifferent to him. With Aristotle, on the other hand, this purpose was
not present, he merely had the simple individual before him; and his
end was to bring up and to develop the individuality as such. Aristotle
is known to be a profound, thorough, and abstract metaphysician, and it
is evident that he meant seriously with Alexander. That Aristotle did
not follow with Alexander the ordinary superficial method of educating
princes, might be confidently expected from the earnestness of one who
well knew what was truth and true culture. It is also evident from
the circumstance that Alexander, while in the midst of his conquests
in the heart of Asia, when he heard that Aristotle had made known his
acroamatic doctrines in speculative (metaphysical) writings, wrote him
a reproachful letter, in which he said that he should not have made
known to the common people what the two had worked out together. To
this Aristotle replied that, though published, they were really just as
much unpublished as before.[82]